Mansur recently sent me an e-mail saying he had found
an Ethiopian Hedgehog around his house in Al Thweer village in Zulfi area.
Mansur is extremely knowledgeable about the wildlife of the region and is a
person I ask regularly to help me out on reptiles I have seen that I have no
idea about the identity. Mansur said that the hedgehogs are common around farms
and houses on the edge of town as well as in some oasis. The original arabic
name was Qonfod with the local name in Zulfi as well as maybe some other areas
of central Saudi Arabia is Doalaj. The more common English name for the
Ethiopian Hedgehog is the Desert Hedgehog and they are mainly active at night.
They are a solitary species that forage on the ground for a range of insect and
other invertebrate prey, as well as occasional small vertebrates. The species
is widely distributed across northern Africa, from Morocco and Mauritania in
the west, to Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia in the east. It also occurs in
the Middle East and across most of the Arabian Peninsula including Saudi
Arabia.
